Superb aircraft, superb thread
I would like to know how susceptible both the clever intakes and the Olympus engines were to damage from bird ingestion, and if it ever happened in flight. I assume the answer might lie in the positioning of the ramps at takeoff and bird inhabited altitudes?
Also, a theme throughout the thread has been that the two projects of the era that people wanted to work on were Apollo and Concorde. My question is; were there any companies (and particularly individuals) who were lucky enough to work in some part (large or small) on both of these marvels of engineering?
I would also be very interested to hear:
i) From the pilots - what the "worst" (both subjectively and objectively if you like) situation or failure was that you trained for in the sim or on a real aircraft.
ii) From the engineers - the "Concorde factor" aside, how was she to work on and how did her systems compare in terms of ease of maintenance to regular passenger aircraft of the day? What were the jobs/events most and least looked forward to?
iii) Any more about the de-tune facility in some of the pictures posted earlier - was its sole function to hold the bird in place and quieten the engine noise, or did it serve any other purpose (e.g. did it contain any measuring instruments).
Disclaimer: Not a pilot/engineer.